The past couple of weeks had seen a flurry of activities at Singapore Chinatown as families prepared to celebrate the coming of the Year of the Dragon. I usually avoid crowds, but simply couldn’t pass up the once-in-a-year opportunity to photograph and document the festivities at the Chinatown Lunar New Year Bazaar and surrounding streets.
To keep things simple, the photographs you see in this article were taken with the XF 18mm and 33mm f/1.4 primes, and all images published here are JPEGs taken straight-out-of-camera with little to no processing. I will use the terms “Chinese New Year” and “Lunar New Year” interchangeably throughout this piece. I also intend to keep my writing brief, preferring instead to let my pictures speak for themselves.
The bazaar is a central part of the Chinese New Year festivities in Singapore and is easily accessible by foot from either the Chinatown or Maxwell MRT stations. I had the good fortune (pun not intended) of visiting the bazaar just after a heavy shower which made it much easier to navigate the less crowded streets.
I started my walkabout with a brief stopover at the rooftop carpark of People’s Park Complex, which afforded a good view of the bazaar. People’s Park Complex is accessible from the Chinatown MRT station.
Lining the streets are decorative dragons that appear to herald the arrival of the Year of the Dragon, and could be seen from Garden Link Bridge.
As an aside, I had deliberately chosen not to photograph “that Chinatown Dragon“, which was said to have disturbingly human-looking eye; there were already so many of these pictures circulating on the internet so I didn’t feel the need to add to everyone’s misery!
Instead, I had decided to take a different approach – one that required me to get much closer to the people and happenings on the ground.
The bazaar features a wide array of traditional goods, snacks and festive decorations which attracts throngs of shoppers and tourists alike. There were also some street and stage performances.
Last but not least perhaps, no trip to Chinatown is complete without stopping by the famous Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.
Further Reading
For more pictures, check out my portfolio – Year of the Dragon.